Dracula: Hearts of Fire (Dracula Heart's) (62 page)

    “Well brother, I fear that witho
ut this enchantment working we’
re both lost
, although I’m not six feet under in a box
.
It
sure
would be nice to hear your voice again.
”

    Dorian looke
d over his left shoulder and caught
a c
row watching him in the decrepit window,
past the bugs and dead flies, watching intently as if it was some sort of spy
. He smiled at it knowingly. In the kitchen drawer he searched through more than a dozen leather pouches until he found the two that he sought, one marked with a
n
S and the other with a D
.
He mixed the silver dust with the specks of dried red sap from the Dragon’s Blood Tree (Dracaena Cinnabari)
which
originates from a group of four islands in the Indian Ocean
, Socotra archipelago. He put the two ingredients i
n the palm of his hand and mixing
them together, said a few words to bind them, and then watched as a white mist was released
from the concoction.
He placed the two feathers on each end of the hair
inside the mist
and they bound themselves to it. A chainsaw
now
couldn’t force them apart.

    The wizard had mixed feelings. Unless there was another spell out there that would bring him to his brother, and he had searched for years without success, then this was it. He hoped that time
would at least
close the wound if not heal it. A part of him wanted to run out and cast the spell, but he really didn’t want to see the last stand of hair float into the sky and into oblivion.
It was likely that it would take a part of his soul with him.
Hope was worth more than a tonne of gold.
He quickly turned
and shot a gray lightning bolt
at the crow and killed it. Dorian wasn’t about to risk the bird attacking the
spell as it floated up and off, disrupting its flight pattern.

    The wizard exited the house and stood on the rickety porch and felt the pull of the enchantment; it wanted to be released and take to th
e wind. He stood there for several
minutes waiting and wondering. The odds weren’t with him with but a single attempt remaining
but it did depend on how far away his brother actually was
. He released it and it shot straight into the air; he morphed into a bat and followed it as best he could but it was gone. It didn’t act like the others at all, none of them had gone straight up like that.

  
He went to the side of the cabin and kicked a hole in it
.

    The feathers went straight up almost a
mile;
its magic searched for
Lemuel inside the coffin and then started to slowly float back towards the earth. It circled like a
glider in free fall. Lemuel awo
ke from his nap and could sense something pulling at him again but had no idea what it was.

    Dorian pulled his foot out of t
he house and fell
. Even with his enhanced vision he saw nothing.
It was as if his lifeblood was slowly draining, drop by drop
; he was
mentally
depleted.
Then he saw it, swirling down toward him. He couldn’t believe it. Was it really going to work? He followed it and followed it until the enchantment landed directly on the roof.
What did that mean? It couldn’t mean that his brother was buried directly under the house?

    “Are you down there brother?”

    Dorian pushed the house about forty feet and
then ran back to where it had been. He
looked down at the patch of earth alive with worms and bugs. He blurred off to the hardware store and soon returned with a shovel and paused to consider. It was best not to get his hopes up to
o
high as the enchantment could be wrong. He leaned on the shovel and thought that this was it, one way or another.

    Lemuel could just barely make out the sounds of digging, because with the centuries that
had gone by the ground was
compacted
, not allowing much sound through
. He opened his eyes and stared at a small spider crawling on the top of the casket. Could it be Dorian up there in the process of digging him out? He certainly didn’t want to get his hopes up
after all this time. He screamed
his brother’s name but there was no response.

    Dorian dug slowly as he needed time to think. He dug as slowly as a human would, throwing the dirt some forty feet in the air. When he got down to six feet he was disappointed to find nothing. At seven and then eight feet he jumped out of
the large hole assuming that unfortunately he
wasn’t down there. It was unlikely that they would have buried him deeper than eight
feet;
the location was the thing, not the depth.

    Lemuel cursed
for almost a minute at
the sound of silence. Whoever was up there had stopped digging
. At least it had sounded like digging, perhaps there was something else going on up there? After all these years he could be hallucinating. He screamed his loudest but still didn’t hear any response.

    Dorian stood looking down into the hole. A nearby crow was making a lot of noise making it difficult to concentrate. He shot a bolt at it but missed and it flew off. Then he thought he heard something. It was faint but he cocked his head as he listened intently. He jumped back down into the hole and listened but whatever it was had stopped. Or perhaps it was simply his imagination.
He jumped up and down in the hole.

    Lemuel heard a thud. It almost seemed that someone really was up there, but what the hell they were doing he couldn’t say. He screamed and screamed and then heard the sound of more digging. If it was an auditory hallucination it was a good one. He stopped to listen some more and the sound of the shovel hitting the coffin almost scared the shit out of him.

    “Lemuel!” Dorian pulled the oak coffin out of the ground. “Lemuel, can you hear me?”

    “Thank GOD! Hurry up and get me the hell out of here!
How long have I been in here? Can you hear me?
”

    Dorian smashed the dirty coffin hard and it should have broken open with his strength but it didn’t. He actually hurt his hand on it. Again and again he hit it hard
. “What the hell?”

    “Get me out of here!”

    Dorian looked for a seal where the box would have been closed
so he could pry it open
but there was none
.
He jumped in the air and gave it the bionic elbow smash but even that didn’t
work.
Even after centuries the spell hadn’t weakened one iota. He jumped around with a crushed elbow and was glad when it healed.

    “What are you doing up there?”

    “I can’t get you out. You’re sealed in with some powerful spell.”

    “You’re a wizard you jackass. Get me out of here!”

    “I can’t. I don’t know how. I’ll get you out but it might take some time.”

    Thrashing and screaming was heard from inside the box. “Help me!”

    “Lemuel, what the hell is going on in there?”

    “Help me I can’t breathe!”

    “You don’t need to breathe. I think you’re having a panic attack.”

    “What’s that?”

    “Just what it sounds like, an attack of panic.”

     “I’m gonna kill you when I get out of here!”

     “Then I’m not letting you out.”

     “I was just kidding
.
Help me.
” Lemuel sounded pitiful.

    
Dorian sat on the coffin and started to think. He wasn’t going to be happy if it took another three hundred years to get him out of there.

CHAPTER
SEVENTY

    T
HE CROWDS GAVE THEIR TICKETS
as they entered the stadium to watch some baseball.
There was excitement in the air, the grownups felt like kids.
Yankee Stadium was something else
when seen for the first time
,
definitely not like seeing it on television,
so big and beautiful that the memory would remain forever stored in the most impressed place in the mind.
It hugeness was the first thing one noticed
and most thought it was well worth the billion and a half that it had cost to build
.
The field was so green and majestic, and for many it was awe-inspiring.
It was a place to lift one’s spirits, making people happy to be alive.
The scents and the sights were overwhelming
;
t
he smell of fresh bagels, beer, hotdogs and
tubs of
popcorn.
The atmosphere lifted one’s spirit.

   
The Indiana limest
one facade
at gate 4 resembled
the outside of the Yankee Stadium in 1923.

   
The Yankees were going to battle the Mets.
The crowd was excited and the kids were thrilled, but
with 45
,
121 people in attendance the place was ripe for vampires. They always announced the number of vampire sheriffs to the cheers of the crowd
, always exaggerating
the numbers
.
They said there were over forty
red sheriffs in attend
ance, but in actuality there were
only two. There simply weren’t enough sheriffs’ to go around.